As You Like It
By
William Shakespeare
Act I:
Scene 2

ROSALIND.Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and wouldyou yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget abanished father, you must not learn me how to remember anyextraordinary pleasure.

CELIA.Herein I see thou lov'st me not with the full weight that Ilove thee; if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thyuncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me,I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; sowouldst thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteouslytempered as mine is to thee.

ROSALIND.Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice inyours.

CELIA.You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like tohave; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir: for whathe hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render theeagain in affection: by mine honour, I will; and when I break thatoath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dearRose, be merry.

CELIA.Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal: but love no manin good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than withsafety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.

ROSALIND.What shall be our sport, then?

CELIA.Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from herwheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

ROSALIND.I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightilymisplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake inher gifts to women.

CELIA.'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makeshonest; and those that she makes honest she makes veryill-favouredly.

ROSALIND.Nay; now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortunereigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

CELIA.No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not byFortune fall into the fire? — Though Nature hath given us wit toflout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut offthe argument?

CELIA.Peradventure this is not Fortune's work neither, butNature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason ofsuch goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: foralways the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. — How now, wit? whither wander you?

TOUCHSTONE.Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CELIA.Were you made the messenger?

TOUCHSTONE.No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

ROSALIND.Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCHSTONE.Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they weregood pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught:now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and themustard was good: and yet was not the knight forsworn.

CELIA.How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

ROSALIND.Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCHSTONE.Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swearby your beards that I am a knave.

CELIA.By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCHSTONE.By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by thatthat is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight,swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, hehad sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or thatmustard.

CELIA.Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st?

TOUCHSTONE.One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

CELIA.My father's love is enough to honour him enough: speakno more of him: you'll be whipp'd for taxation one of these days.

TOUCHSTONE.The more pity that fools may not speak wisely whatwise men do foolishly.

CELIA.By my troth, thou sayest true: for since the little wit thatfools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise menhave makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.